I only have problems with randomly appearing red or green squares when I launch iPhoto and occasionally when watching video. A reboot usually fixes it until I launch iPhoto again. Anyone else see this happening?
iMac (27-inch Mid 2010), iOS 5.1
You have to think Apple is working on a fix, this is an exceptional defect, there is likely many other people with the same issue that simply believe their Mac has *isht the bed. We need someone at MacWorld and Apple Insider to highlight it.
I run a clean Mavericks OS, 2.93 i7 2010 BTO iMac 27". Excellent physical condition. Runs in a cool basement, recently opened the glass bezel and LCD to de-dust the entire system. That said, hard freezes occasionally, blue/yellow/magenta pixels. I leave it running 24/7 now because the sleep/energy saving modes totally screw me over. Also leave as many USB devices unplugged as much as possible.This makes computting tolerable, but by no means am I doing anything eco friendly here nor am I utilizing "the world's most advanced operating system" hahaha...
I can also confirm this is a software issue.
A couple of weeks ago I installed Ubuntu 13.10 on my 2010 iMac - and have been using it daily.
No boot camp- I just booted from the Ubuntu CD and completely blew away all the partitions.
During the install I saw the blue/green boxes and artifacts on the screen and began to think it was a lost cause.
However after rebooting after the Ubuntu install the spots have been gone for 2 weeks. Not even a hint of the boxes! I have 3d effects enabled and tried both xorg and AMD proprietary drivers. No issues and fast performance.
My next steps are to now boot off restore CDs and see if I can re-install OS X. I am wondering if the Ubuntu installer wiped out any hidden partitions/boot settings etc that boot camp or a clean reinstall from recovery disks otherwise would have left alone.
I will let you know what I find.
Crispoe
After installing 10.6 red/green dots after 5 minutes of use.
Back to Ubuntu for me. I will probably end up getting a new mac at some point, but at least I can keep this one up as running on Ubuntu until (if) there is a fix that is released.
Crispoe
I am having the same issues everyone else is talking about so I thought I would jump in. Running Mid 2010 27 inch, Radeon 5750, OS 10.9.1. I have tried almost all the recommendations from previous posts with no relief and the problem continues to get worse. I added a screen shot of my applications foler becuase it has taken on a nice rainbow color along with having dots all over my screen. This seems rediculous that there is no fix yet. Hopefully Apple can help us out here.
-Josh
I have got a new Mac to replace my ailing iMac, however I have been able to get rid of the dots in Mac OS X by disabling quartz extreme. This will greatly degrade the graphics performance - but it is a good solution to keep the Mac running for remedial tasks, web browsing etc. iMovie and Final Cut will not work with quartz extreme disabled.
If you want to try it, here is how you can turn it on or off. Again - this will decrease graphics performance and screen redraws, so unless your machine is crashing and locking up making it unusable - this probably isn't the best solution...
To turn off quarts extreme:
Open terminal and run:
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver GLCompositor -dict tileHeight -int 0 tileWidth -int 0
Reboot
and this turns it back on:
defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver GLCompositor
Reboot
Hope this helps someone as it helped me and apologies if someone else has already posted this.
I'm going to repost this since the discussion has grown so large. I too have purchased a new iMac and am using my old Mac as a second monitor.
From an eariler post:
I never did fix it but I've got some good information for the group. I decided to buy a new 2013 iMac and figured I would fix and repurpose the old one when I found the time. Since I primarily use my desktop for music production I decided to try and use the old iMac as an additional monitor just to see if it would work. I won't go into much detail about trying to use a cord - forget about that. I decided to use Air Display. What I found is that the display worked flawlessly when used as a second monitor. If I use it as a stand alone the spots appear immediately. I tried passing the same picture back and forth. On the new iMac it displays just fine on both monitors. On the old one it gets annihilated with dots. After everyone from the Genius Bar to independent shops telling me it was likely hardware, I'm now fairly certain it's software.
My apple diagonistics check came back with zero hardware issues, so it has to be software/driver related. Apple should improve their diagnostics tools when their own software tells you it's not hardware related and a 20 year-old at that Genius Bar tells you it's hardware even though their own software says it not hardware.
Now, instead of the problem being hardware or software, its apparently mental. People are doing weird stuff to their computers including me. What works now is if I say 3 hail marrys, hold my breath for 5 seconds, clean install a new back-dated OSX, leave my computer running for 24/7, disable all sleep & energy saving modes, and report on this thread my progress. hahaha.
The Worlds Most Advanced Operating System
While thinking about turning off Quartz I decided to open Qmaster visual system in Preferences only to find it unavailable (broken): "Could not load Apple Qmaster preference pane."
It would be interesting to know if those with video problems have a problem with Qmaster as well. And, whether those who have 2010 iMacs that do not have video issues have a functioning Qmaster preference panel.
jmf
I would also like to know if a file called "Protec6" is located in /Library/StartupItems on machines with display issues.
jmf
I have a 27" 2010 iMac with this issue. I do not have the Protec6 file located in /Library/StartupItems . My Qmaster prefs panel will not load.
Also, like someone else above mentioned, when this iMac is used as a 2nd display (using FW-TB cable), there is no sign of this glitching issue.
My iMac is a 2010 27" and I don't have "Protec6". But my iMac has a fresh copy of 10.9.1
I didn't toy with my Qmaster prefs yet until I see something trend toward correcting the problem. Cheers.
Is there anybody here who can launch/load their Qmaster utility preference pane?
jmf
I just tried to launch QMaster and could not.
Once again, my system is OSX 10.9.1 // 2010 built-to-order 27" iMac 2.93 i7 16gb Ram// ATI 5750 video card.
...also, to alleviate glitch symptoms, I noticed some improvement/relief if I consolidate all my desktops to 1 single desktop. After installing a clean OSX Mavericks, I tried to setup 4-5 desktops for certain apps, and quickly realized the 3 finger swipe from pane to pane produced sluggish graphics and motion + more colored pixels, more hard freeze instances. Swiping from pane to pane produces a ton of colored pixel sections, everything was lit-up like a Christmas tree.
After consolidating to 1 desktop pane and dissabling all sleep and energy saving modes, this lemon is running decent with only 1 hard freeze in the past 5 days thus far.
I like Mavericks, I assume it runs great on a newer Mac. But unless Apple produces a fix for this, we're governed to tailor our systems to alleviate glitch behavior....
Blame it on Man-Bear-Pig.
QMaster crashes when I launch it as well.
I was looking into the Qmaster preference pane connection and found that it is the only pane that is not 64bit. See: "About This Mac" "Software" "Preference Panes."
jmf
Red and green square dots?
